T20 World Cup 2024: A tournament for the bowlers for a change

The lopsided contest between bat and ball in the 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) irked the purists big time as there was little respite for the men with the ball in hand. The run rate of 9.56 was by far the highest across 17 seasons of the tournament and power-hitting became so common that it turned boring at one point in time.

The IPL is the biggest short-form tournament on show after the T20 World Cup and many feared bowling would become almost irrelevant in the format. 

But the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the USA which started less than a week after the closure of the IPL brought good news for the bowlers and for a change, the batters saw the other side of the coin.

Now that the group stage of this year’s T20 World Cup has come to an end, The Business Standard (TBS) looks at some of the key numbers of the tournament. 

The slowest-scoring World Cup

This is the first time as many as 20 teams have participated in the T20 World Cup. The supersized tournament has, by far, been the slowest-scoring World Cup with a run rate of 6.71. 

Never before has the run rate of a T20 World Cup fallen below seven runs an over. 

The inaugural edition in South Africa remains the fastest-scoring T20 World Cup, then called the World T20, to date.

The ongoing tournament has been far from easy for the batters as they have so far averaged only 17.80 runs per wicket, comfortably the lowest in any T20 World Cup. l

This has also been the only tournament with a sub-20 batting average. 

Contrasting conditions 

This T20 World Cup has overall been quite bowling-friendly, but the pitches in the USA have aided the bowlers like no other. The pitches in New York’s Long Island have received a lot of flak because of its unpredictability. 

In the USA, the run rate in the group stage was just over a run-a-ball (6.17) while in the Caribbean, it was 6.76. 

Fast bowlers reveled in the USA while spinners had a big say in mostly slow, low Caribbean wickets. 

The pacers went below run-a-ball in the USA (5.94) while the spinners’ economy rate was 6.92. 

The picture was different in the Caribbean where the spinners went for 6.66 an over. The economy rate of the fast bowlers (6.87) was higher than that of spin. 

Polar opposite to IPL

The IPL, earlier this year, had seen an unprecedented number (eight) of 250-plus totals but this has not been the case in the World Cup.

In fact, 72.6% of the innings in the ongoing tournament have seen sub-140 totals. 

This is the first time so many low scores have happened in the T20 World Cup. 

The highest percentage of sub-140 totals before this tournament was 51.11% in the 2021 tournament in the UAE.

Small totals, big impact

In the shortest format, no target seems to be unachievable nowadays with the superior skillset of batters and the depth of the teams. 

But cricket is a format where the result is heavily dictated by conditions.

Because of the bowling-friendly nature of the pitches, low totals are being defended successfully in the World Cup. 

To date, only five totals of less than 120 have been defended in the history of the T20 World Cup and interestingly, four have come this year.

Bangladesh successfully defended 106 against Nepal in their final group game in Kingstown which is now the lowest defended total in the T20 World Cup history. 

Maidens aplenty

In their final group-stage match, New Zealand’s Lockie Ferguson bowled an outrageous spell that included 24 dot balls or four maiden overs. 

Maiden overs are like gold dust in T20 matches but not in this World Cup. There have been 38 maidens in the group stage of the tournament.

Before this, only once more than 20 maiden overs were bowled in a single edition of the T20 World Cup. The 2012 tournament that was held in Sri Lanka saw bowlers bowl 21 maidens.

Slog overs not a slogfest 

In the Caribbean in particular, power-hitting becomes increasingly difficult as the ball becomes softer with time, noted T20 and ODI World Cup winner Eoin Morgan leading up to the World Cup. 

This has been evident in this year’s tournament as the batters are finding it difficult to go big in the slog overs. The run rate in the death overs (17-20) in this tournament has been only 8.08. 

Only once did the slog-over run rate fall below nine an over. The 2022 edition in Australia saw a death-over-scoring rate of 8.79 per over.

The slow wickets have aided bowlers who have a lot of variations up their sleeves. For instance, Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman has an astonishing slog-over economy rate of 1.66 in this tournament.